Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Do MFA Programs Hurt Poetry?

In this great video interview with poet and president of the Guggenheim foundation, Edward Hirsch, discusses the effect of MFA programs on poetry and gives advice to novice poets.

What do you think of the MFA debate? Have they done more harm than good to the state of poetry today?

1 comment:

Kit O'Connell said...

MFA programs are terrible. They teach writers to write MFA fiction, which is its own nigh-unreadable subgenre. Poets get to learn MFA poetry. That is if it doesn't kill their desire to write at all -- something I have seen happen probably close to a dozen times now personally. My old housemate, Steve Brust, and I came up with the idea that they are 12-step programs to quit writing.